How Long Does it Take Cannabis to Pass Through the Body

There are many theories and hypotheses circulating regarding the length of time it takes marijuana to pass through one’s system. However, if you truly want to know how long it will take, you need to look at some facts and then decide for yourself. In order to make your best guess as to when your system will have no traces of THC or marijuana’s other active ingredients, you need to take a look at how much you’ve been smoking since the last extended period you had of not smoking at all. For those patients and stoners who regularly medicate multiple times per day, every day, it will take much longer for their body fat cells to be free of marijuana. Marijuana is stored in body fat cells, and is ever-so-slowly extracted from these cells by the body. While the marijuana is being extracted from the cells – and while it’s still in the fat cells – it can be traceable through blood, urine and hair follicle tests.

Once a person smokes enough marijuana for their fat cells to reach terminal saturation – meaning no more marijuana can be absorbed into the cells – it will generally take between 4 and 6 weeks to exit the person’s system. For a regular, everyday stoner or heavy medical marijuana patient, reaching terminal saturation is not very difficult. In fact, it happens quite easily and after just a month or two of heavy, everyday use.

Fortunately and somewhat amazingly, there is a way to accurately determine how marijuana is stored in your fat cells. Every time you smoke weed, you are saturating your blood with THC and other active ingredients, such as CBD. The chemicals in your blood are then absorbed by the fat cells, filtering out the active ingredients from your blood. This causes you to lose the psychoactive effect. Blood saturation of marijuana cannot exceed 100%, meaning that you can reach terminal saturation of your blood fairly rapidly if you keep smoking within every hour. After your blood reaches terminal saturation, you cannot get any higher, until the fat cells filter out the marijuana from your system and absorb them. However, unlike the body’s blood saturation level, the fat saturation level can far exceed 100%. In fact, if you smoke marijuana several times per day, every day, you have a fat saturation level of 1000%. Body fat excretes marijuana from its cell at the rate of roughly 10% of saturation per day. So, somebody who has a fat saturation level of only 100% or less (meaning they smoked, but only one or two times) can rid their system of traceable marijuana in 5 – 10 days. For someone with a fat saturation level of 1000% it will usually take between 4 and 6 weeks, but sometimes as short as 3 or as long as 8 weeks.

A person’s body fat and total mass is also something to take into consideration. Someone who has more body fat, obviously has more room to store marijuana as body fat saturation. A person who has almost no body fat can rid their system of marijuana with 3 to 4 weeks of abstinence, even when they’re a regular and heavy smoker. Exercise is essentially the only way to help boost the time of this process, especially cardio exercise, such as running, swimming, riding bikes, hiking, jump roping, et cetera. Drinking lots of cranberry juice, pickle juice and water will only have to make you pee a lot, since as we know, marijuana is stored in fat cells, not the urinary tract or bladder. Detox solutions and masking agents may work on a home or basic drug test, but many employers and probation officers use up-to-date tests that can either detect the masking/detox agent or can tell you used something to flush your system, since your urine will usually be a bright, unnatural color when using these sort of products. Lastly, before you take your test after exercise and time of not smoking, by an at-home drug test for less than $10 just to be extra careful.